People the weak link in cybersecurity: report

[Brian Warkoczeski]

People the weak link in cybersecurity: report

Wed Jul 22, 2009

www.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The popularity of Facebook and other popular 
social networking sites has given hackers new ways to steal both money 
and information, the security company Sophos said in a report released 
on Wednesday.

About half of all companies block some or all access to social networks 
because of concerns about cyber incursions via the sites, according to 
the study.

"Research findings also revealed that 63 percent of system 
administrators worry that employees share too much personal information 
via their social networking sites, putting their corporate 
infrastructure -- and the sensitive data stored on it -- at risk," the 
Sophos report said.

This is despite years of exhortations to computer users that they should 
keep personal information private and refrain from opening attachments 
to emails from unfamiliar sources.

One result is that a quarter of businesses have been hit by spam, 
phishing or malware attacks via Twitter or social networking sites, 
Sophos said.

Phishing is emails or chitchat that scam artists engage in to convince 
would-be victims to reveal personal information like passwords or bank 
numbers while malware is malicious software, often designed to 
infiltrate a computer system for illicit purposes.

Sophos also found that the number of Web pages with malware quadrupled 
since early 2008, with the United States hosting 39.6 percent of it, 
more than any other country. China was second with 14.7 percent.

Sophos also said that 15 new fraudulent anti-virus vendors were 
discovered every day, triple the number found daily in 2008.

Sophos, which has dual headquarters in the United Kingdom and the United 
States, is the biggest privately held security software maker.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz, editing by Matthew Lewis)